| previous chapter |
This chapter begins with Wanderer asking Jared for a favor. She wants to go on a raid to retrieve cryotanks, but she doesn’t want anybody else to know about, nor to have to explain herself to anybody. Wanderer informs Jared that Healing facilities store empty cryotanks outside the buildings and that nobody will notice if any of them go missing since there are always more Souls incoming that outgoing. After making sure that Wanderer is sure about this mission, Jared agrees and they proceed to leave the caves. As Wanderer exits, she calls herself a traitor for risking her brothers and sisters’ lives in the hands of the humans, but she also acknowledges the fact that this is a war and the humans have every right to hate her species. She also thinks about the Seeker and whether or not she would risk her lives for her fellow Souls or if she would only care about herself. Despite all of these fleeting doubts, Wanderer knows that it’s too late to change her mind. She knows that her sacrifice will be worth the price she has to pay.
When Wanderer meets up with Jared, he tells her that he saw the Seeker and that she was very loud and “energetic.” She asks then asks Jared why the humans are being so kind to the ungrateful Seeker and Jared’s reply is that they didn’t want to repeat what happened the first time they caught a soul. “They didn’t want to feel like monsters.”
The two of them decide to get some rest before their raid. They use makeshift beds and sleep beside the jeep and Wanderer is astounded when Jared lies beside her and offers his arm as a pillow. When they wake, they make a game plan to go to Phoenix. They inconspicuously enter the Healing facility and grab some medicine, then find their way to the unloading area in the maternity wing. Wanderer unthinkingly makes a comment that Jared will “always know where to look,” suggesting that this raid might be repeated in the future but without Wanderer there. This later on leads Jared to bring up the Seeker and what he suspects Wanderer is planning to do. His suspicions are correct and Wanderer admits that she knows how to remove the Soul from a host. She then tells Jared the story of when she was on the Mists Planet and she had to help one of her friends because he was dying. She describes the process as best as she can in a long story (which she later refers to as one of her best stories), while Jared patiently listens. After her story is finished, Jared is shocked—in awe and in admiration, perhaps? He quickly snaps back into focus when Wanderer suggest that they can probably safely steal the cryotanks now. Jared agrees and off they go.
